Brian Lewandowski, a research associate with the Leeds School of Business at the Univerity of Colorado, addresses a crowd Wednesday at the Energy Proud luncheon in Greeley.

The nation has fully recovered from the Great Recession, and Colorado and Weld County weathered it perhaps the best in the nation.

But times are about to get tougher amid a national oil and gas downturn, CU Leeds School of Business researcher Brian Lewandowski told a crowd of about 75 assembled at the Greeley Country Club in the latest Energy Proud luncheon on Wednesday.

With Weld commanding the lion's share of the state's oil and gas production, that means perhaps even tougher times are coming to town.

"The point here is, when the energy industry turns, we know it's a boom and bust, that bust cycle does slow down economic growth," Lewandowski said.

The industry has contracted because of waning demand worldwide. And while the United States is now the largest oil producer in the world, prices have plummeted, and oil and gas companies have responded with layoffs and other cost-cutting measures.

The news gets a littler tougher to swallow with the recent state announcement that the state Department of Labor and Employment will reduce Weld's 2015 job growth by 4,800, resulting in a 1 percent loss in jobs instead of the expected 3.7 percent growth.

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For the past two years, Weld has been at or near the top of the U.S. charts in job growth, compared to about 380 other metropolitan statistical areas. The job growth revisions will sink Weld closer to the bottom, Lewandowski said.

With decreased crude prices, the industry has lost a good 20 percent of its workers in the past year, Lewandowski said, even while 2015 production was at peak levels in Colorado.

Weld produces just shy of 90 percent of the state's oil, production from which fuels state severance taxes, which fund Colorado schools. Property taxes fuel local governments, as well. Those numbers will start to go down next year.

The boom-and-bust nature of the economy is the industry will come back, but what could it come back to?

"The price impact is short-term," he said. "The policy impact can be potentially very long-term."

Colorado's voters may be asked this fall to approve 2,500-foot setbacks between oil and gas activity and residential areas. If those come into play, already sluggish production could grind to a halt. It would hit Weld the hardest.

"Once those parcels are taken off line, those companies go away, and there isn't an expectation they'll be able to drill again. Those parcels will be off limits," Lewandowski said.

A saving grace, he said, is Colorado and Weld's economies are diverse and are not totally reliant on the industry.

For all the hoopla of oil and gas in this state, it is still only 6 percent of the economy. Other industries, such as manufacturing and construction have absorbed losses in the energy industry thus far.

And while Colorado has recovered better than most from the Great Recession, other states haven't.

In Wyoming and Alaska, about a third of the states' economies are reliant on the energy industry.

About 15 percent of the Weld County economy relies on the oil and gas industry, which employs about 7 percent of the county's workforce, Lewandowski said.